As a business owner, you probably spend a good deal of time contemplating how to entice customers and, more importantly, keep them coming back for more. Add to the mix the fact that your business calls it’s home the Net and you have a bit of a quandary on your hands: How do you market your business and keep your customers informed of your latest products and services when your clients are worldwide and your budget isn’t so vast? Sure, you can go the conventional route and send out mass eNewsletters every so often, but that option poses a few hassles:

• Your email may get lost in the abyss that is so many people’s inbox.
• You actually have to find the time to compose, create, and send out the newsletter (or pay someone else to do it).
• You miss out on potential business because some people may not sign up for your e-list—most people these days are already buried in email and don’t want to dig a deeper grave.
• Your email may get automatically filtered straight to a person’s Junk folder.
• Emails simply aren’t as easy to navigate as a Web page is—no clicks of buttons to send your customers straight to their destination.

Thankfully, some fellow email-laden computer buff created a solution for the big dilemma: Enter RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication.

Defining RSS

Simply put, RSS is the information junkie’s prized means to an end. Just as syndication allows a professional writer to deliver an article to countless newspapers for print, it allows a website manager to deliver content to countless people in a very simple, streamlined manner. Here’s how it works:

1. You create an RSS button on your website, linking to your feed.

   A feed is essentially any content that you supply as a regular deliverable to readers. For example, if you’re an artist who sells online, you could set up a feed link on your “Paintings” page to notify subscribers every time you update that page. Or, if you run an online clothing store, you can create a feed to send updates to readers whenever you add items to women’s dresses (or any other line, for example). See the next section for more ideas for using RSS.

2. When customers browse your site, they click the RSS button to subscribe to your feed.

   This step is simple and self-explanatory; if you want to see what happens when you subscribe to a feed, subscribe to one such as Amazon.com’s Gold Box Deals (see the following image).

   

3. As you create updates to the part of your site that links to the feed, a summary of the new content is automatically delivered to the “feed readers” of all your subscribers.

   Depending on how the feed is set up, customers may be able to choose how often their feed reader should search for new content. If that option isn’t available, readers simply receive updates as they’re made.

   In order to read content from an RSS feed, a customer needs an RSS feed reader—these tools are available for free download online, and Internet Explorer 7.0 has a feed reader in the Favorites section to quickly and easily manage feeds. A couple of free downloadable feed readers include Feedreader, a freeware Windows-based application (see the image below), and Google Reader. In addition, consumers can have feeds delivered right to their MyYahoo or personalized Google Web page.

   

Seeing How Retail Businesses Are Using RSS

RSS is a fairly new tool, so progressive online retailers are still refining its use — in fact, the first reported use of RSS for online retail was in 2004. Corporations have been implementing the tool over the past few years in various ways, and small businesses are beginning to follow the trend. Following are a few places businesses can and do implement RSS to grow their business:

• Blogs and news feeds: This area comprises the most popular use for RSS—think daily headlines or blog entries delivered right to your virtual feed mailbox. If you use a blog to cross-promote your online business, you can include an RSS icon on your blog’s home page so shoppers receive regular blog updates from you. When the feed is sent to readers, they read the feed summary, which includes a link to your website—if they decide from the summary that they want to see the whole feed, they simply click the link and are redirected to your site. The result: More visits to your site and the potential for more business.
• Product alerts: If you do not manage a blog, perhaps the most practical use of RSS for you is to send out product alerts. With this setup, your site features RSS icons near the products you’re selling, with a message offering regular updates on those products. So, for example, if a customer is interested in a product you’re selling, he could click on the RSS icon next to it to subscribe to your product alerts. Whenever you update your inventory of the cookware, he receives an alert delivered right to his feed reader — at no expense, whether time or otherwise, to either of you.
• Concept-related information: In addition to blog feeds and product alerts, RSS is also handy for delivering concept-related information to your customers. For example, say some of your products pertain to a particular topic, such as home maintenance, wedding planning, clearance items, or daily deals. You can set up a feed to deliver all product alerts related to those categories to subscribers. This approach is particularly useful if you have general categories of items that will spark the interest of hobbyists or other folks in common situations (for example, when planning anything, from vacations to weddings to the first year of college).

RSS Is for eBay Too!

If you have an eBay business, check out eBay’s feed generator. Although it doesn’t enable you to set up RSS icons on your seller site, it does allow consumers to create their own feeds to which they subscribe. It requires a bit of explanation on your part, but you may find the time spent well worth the effort, so encourage your customers to create and subscribe to a feed that pulls directly from your eBay store.

eBay does a nice job taking customers through the step-by-step process of feed creation, but your customers will appreciate a general explanation from you of how the feed generator works. To see for yourself, wander through eBay’s explanation at http://pages.ebay.com/affiliates/tools/rssgenerator/index.html.

Implementing RSS on Your Site

Setting up RSS feeds and placing the icons isn’t as daunting a task as, say, creating the website on which they’ll go, but if you’re not skilled in HTML, we advise that you consult Acadiana Websites to do the job. Prior to forging ahead with RSS implementation, consider the following:

• How many feeds do you want, and what do you want them to include?
• Where on your site do you want the feeds to be located?
• How do you want the feed subscription to work? For example, do you want customers to be able to select timed updates, such as daily or weekly, or do you want simple, standard updates that broadcast each time you update the affected item/category/blog/etc.?

As you get your ideas in order, keep in mind that not only is RSS useful for delivering text content, but it also can deliver images, audio, and video. Because RSS is so new, your creativity can deem you a pacesetter—you may want to brainstorm ways to incorporate these other media into your feeds to expand your influence.

Getting Customers to Subscribe to Your RSS Feed

The most obvious method of gaining customer subscriptions to your feed(s) is to simply put the icons on your site and direct customers’ attention to them. In these early days of RSS, though, consumers are generally a bit behind on the technology, so you’ll need to convince them that your RSS feeds are helpful and simple to use and won’t clutter their lives like eNewsletters so often do. Be sure to incorporate a solid, clear explanation of RSS into your site, keeping it as particular to your site as possible. Also, direct readers to places from which they can download feed readers. As you well know, customer service and ingenuity are the crux of the business machine, so keep your customers in mind as you implement this tool, making sure your feeds are optimally user-friendly.

Also consider listing your feed in directories, which are essentially libraries of websites organized into various categories and subcategories. Listings are free, and as RSS gains more publicity in the mass market, directories will improve with their effectiveness. To see a thorough list of major feed directories, head to http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm.

If you do decide to take advantage of the marketing opportunity that RSS feeds offer, remember to be patient as RSS continues to grow in popularity. Although still young, RSS is definitely an easy means of promoting your retail business—and, as with all great technological advances, consumers will eventually come around.